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A former general manager at an Olive Garden in Bay Shore, N.Y., hired female applicants
based on their perceived attractiveness, traded raises and promotions for sex, and
harassed women workers, a waitress at the restaurant claims (
Baker v. Olive Garden
, E.D.N.Y., No. 2:17-cv-00392, complaint filed
1/25/17
).

Olive Garden and parent Darden Restaurants Inc. also failed to take action against
James Kaiser after an initial complaint about his behavior and instead let him take
leave for anxiety, Amanda Baker alleges in a lawsuit filed Jan. 25 in federal court.
When Kaiser returned from leave, he took up where he left off, including regularly
being drunk at work, Baker asserts.

Baker’s initial complaint to Olive Garden followed an incident in which Kaiser groped
the breasts of the 26-year-old single mother of two and said “this reminded him of
why he hired her in the first place.” Kaiser wasn’t fired until after he groped another
waitress following his return from leave, prompting Kaiser’s boss—who knew about the
harassment all along—to personally apologize to Baker, the lawsuit alleges.

The prevention of sexual and other workplace harassment is an
enforcement priority of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. On Jan. 10, the agency released for
public comment a draft of revised enforcement guidance on the issue. EEOC enforcement
guidance serves as a reference for agency staff and employers, employees and others
covered by federal anti-discrimination laws.

“We have not seen the complaint and are unable to comment,” Darden’s Senior Director
of Communications Rich Jeffers told Bloomberg BNA in a Jan. 27 e-mail.

Sexual Harassment ‘Endemic to Restaurant Industry.’

The draft revised enforcement guidance followed a June 2016
report by a 16-member EEOC select task force on the study of workplace harassment. It urged
employers to reboot their harassment prevention efforts and identified promising practices
for doing so.

The report found that workplaces that rely on customer service or client satisfaction,
those marked by limited communication between organizational levels, and those that
tolerate or encourage alcohol consumption by employees are most at risk for creating
an atmosphere in which sexual harassment can flourish. Restaurants are exposed to
all three risk factors, the EEOC found.

The task force report cites a separate
2014 report from Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, which found sexual harassment to be
“endemic to the restaurant industry.”
ROCU said its survey of the industry revealed that 66.6 percent of female workers
experienced some form of sexual harassment from management and that nearly 80 percent
of women were subjected to sexual harassment by co-workers.

Waitress Sues Under Federal and State Law

Baker’s lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District
of New York, also names Kaiser and Kaiser’s supervisor, Fred Naclerio, as defendants.
She asserts claims under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the New York State
Human Rights Law against all four defendants.

Baker was hired by the Olive Garden and Darden in October 2014, and Kaiser subjected
her and other women to constant sexual harassment from then until he was fired in
October 2016, according to the complaint. The only break in the relentless harassment,
Baker says, was when Kaiser was out on leave for a few months in late 2015 and early
2016 after she told Naclerio that Kaiser had groped her breasts. Baker discussed the
incident with a female manager, who responded that Kaiser “was drunk again,” according
to the complaint.

Baker says she didn’t realize that Kaiser had not been fired or suspended until he
suddenly returned from leave and returned to his role as general manager. From that
point until his discharge, Kaiser required her to take cigarette breaks with him in
“a secluded dumpster area” outside of the restaurant almost every shift. He would
then subject her to sex talk, including comments about other female workers’ bodies
and what they were or might be like in bed, Baker alleges.

Kaiser also told her and other female servers that they would receive larger raises
and promotions if they had sex with him, Baker says. He made good on that offer with
women who obliged, awarding them raises, promotions and overtime work, she asserts.

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